Mathew scored to cancel Liston’s early opener
Churchill Brothers Sports Club was able to hold back a charging Salgaocar Football Club to a 1-1 draw in yesterday’s Group A Bandodkar Gold Trophy fixture held at Duler Stadium, Mapusa. Liston Colaco scored early for the Greens in the 3rd minute while Mathew Colaco restored parity in the 8th minute for Churchill Brothers.
The Salgaocar lads were quick to create trouble in the opposition’s box as Naro Shrestha, Jason Barbosa & Liston combined well to find the leaks in their defence. It didn’t take long for the Greens to get the first goal of the game. Liston’s opening scorcher was set up by Jason in the 3rd after the latter sent a cunning through ball to make things easy for his team-mate. Recovering from the early shock the Churchill lads dug deep & began to create problems of their own for the Salgaocar defence. Manjunath Rathod would have cancelled Liston’s opener earlier if it had not been for custodian Rohan Sheikh’s diving save. Not to be denied Mathew outsmarted the Greens’ defence after he received Cyrus Noronha’s lob inside the box & placed well beyond the keeper’s reach. Jason would have handed the Salgaocar outfit with a lead had it not been for a wonderful goal-line clearance from Jasper Pereira. As the game progressed most of the play was restricted to the mid-field & either side’s fans cheered whenever it seemed an opportunity was presented. The Greens pushing hard to no avail remained in the 1-1 deadlock at half-time.
In the second-half neither side was able to do much trouble as a result of miss passes & shots which were wide off the target. Liston came close to score a brace as he stood over a free-kick on the edge of the box which the young Green sent just above the horizontal post. The game ended as Liston was named the man of the match.
